About Military Museum of the Chinese People's Revolution

Military Museum of the Chinese People's Revolution

The Military Museum of the Chinese People's Revolution (Zhongguo Renmin Geming Junshi Bowuguan), at 9 Fuxing Road in Haidian District, Beijing, is China's first comprehensive military museum and the national military museum of China. It stands on the north side of the central section of Fuxing Road, south of Yuyuantan Park, and displays the military history of the People's Liberation Army (PLA), ancient and modern Chinese military history, and world military history, through weapons, cultural relics, documents, photographs and artworks. Its name was inscribed by Chairman Mao Zedong, and the plaque with his calligraphy hangs above the front gate.

The museum was one of the Ten Great Buildings erected in Beijing for the tenth anniversary of the People's Republic of China. Comprehensively reconstructed between 2012 and 2017, it now has an exhibition surface of 159,000 square metres, expanded from 60,000 square metres, and houses over 180,000 pieces of cultural relics, including 1,793 first-class relics, across 43 exhibition halls in its current accounting. Its four floors of halls are arranged in chronological order, from the wars of ancient China to the building of national defence in the present day.

A Ten Great Building: construction and opening

Construction of the museum began in October 1958 and the building was completed in July 1959; the museum was inaugurated in 1960, with construction ending in August of that year in some accounts. On 12 March 1959 the Central Military Commission of the Chinese Communist Party officially named it the Military Museum of the Chinese People's Revolution, and Chairman Mao Zedong inscribed the museum's name. On 1 August 1960 — Army Day, the anniversary of the PLA's founding — the museum officially opened to the public.

The building itself is a monument of its era. The main building is 94.7 metres tall, of seven storeys in its central block, topped by the gilded emblem of the People's Liberation Army, six metres across, and flanked by two four-storey wings, east and west. The museum occupies a total area recorded at more than 93,700 square metres, of which half is dedicated to the history and culture of the Chinese army in older descriptions, with a construction area of about 60,000 square metres and more than 42,000 square metres of exhibition halls before the reconstruction. Outdoor plazas on either side of the central hall exhibit representative weapons used by the PLA and weapons captured from the enemy during the revolutionary wars.

The 2012–2017 reconstruction

The museum was comprehensively reconstructed from 2012 to 2017 and reopened with a larger central hall that hosts a display of aircraft and missiles. The reconstruction allowed a considerable expansion of the exhibition surface, from 60,000 to 159,000 square metres, and a re-presentation of the permanent exhibitions in chronological order. In its current arrangement the museum counts 43 exhibition halls — earlier arrangements counted ten halls, and another 22 halls and two squares — reflecting successive rehangs as the building and the displays have grown.

The enlarged central hall, with a Dongfeng 1 missile in the centre in the pre-reconstruction display and aircraft and missiles in the new one, remains the visual core of the museum: the visitor passes from the lobby into a space in which the largest weapons of the PLA's modern era are displayed at full scale, before turning to the historical halls on either side.

Collections

The museum houses over 180,000 pieces of cultural relics in its current count, including 1,793 first-class relics. Earlier published counts give over 120,000 ancient, modern and contemporary military relics, together with more than 45,000 historical photographs, 67,000 documents and more than 4,500 artworks — figures that convey the collection's depth in paper and image as well as in objects. The central exhibition hall in the classic arrangement contained over 500 photographs and more than 1,000 mementos of the Chinese revolution led by Mao Zedong over the course of half a century.

Named treasures in accounts of the collection include daggers of the Spring and Autumn Period (770–476 BC), iron swords of the Huns from the Eastern Han Dynasty (25–220), cannons used in the Opium War, the seal of Zuo Zongtang, a telescope used by Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, and a pistol used by Zhu De during the Nanchang Uprising of 1927. An oil lamp used by Mao Zedong during the Jinggang Mountain struggle, photographs showing Mao writing On Protracted War and delivering his speech at the celebration of the founding of New China, and the personal effects of Zhou Enlai, Zhu De and other veterans of the revolution are among the exhibits of the revolutionary halls, which also carry special sections devoted to noted international friends and martyrs such as Norman Bethune and D. S. Kotnis.

The Hall of Weapons

The largest of the museum's halls is the Hall of Weapons. Its extensive holdings showcase domestic and foreign weapons, including blades, small arms, artillery, tanks, armoured personnel carriers, anti-aircraft weaponry, jet fighters, rockets and rocket launchers, and cruise missiles — arranged in the central hall work in six categories including small arms, artillery and missiles. Foreign weapons include Soviet tanks purchased or donated during the 1950s and 1960s, Japanese weaponry captured during the Second Sino-Japanese War, and American weaponry captured from the Kuomintang during the Chinese Civil War and from United Nations forces during the Korean War.

The Hall of Weapons also displays equipment from China's space programme, such as satellites and a two-seat orbital capsule, extending the definition of military technology to the aerospace age. With two exceptions, the museum's other halls are largely historical exhibits, combining plaster sculptures, maps, paintings, artefacts, films and plaques — in Chinese, with selected texts translated into English — whereas the weapons hall speaks through the machines themselves.

The revolutionary war halls

Three halls in the eastern side of the main building, their titles in the calligraphy of Chen Yi, penned at the request of Zhou Enlai, depict the 28 years from the founding of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921 to the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, through more than 5,000 exhibits in the classic arrangement. The Hall of the Agrarian Revolutionary War, on the first floor, covers the confrontations between 1927 and 1937 of the Communist Party and the ruling Kuomintang — the Second Revolutionary Civil War, from August 1927 to July 1937 — including the organisation of the Party and the army and the establishment of rural revolutionary bases. The Hall of the War to Resist Japanese Aggression, on the second floor, covers the Second Sino-Japanese War from July 1937 to August 1945 — dated 1937–1947 in some hall lists — the war of resistance of the Chinese people.

The Hall of the War of Liberation of China, also on the second floor, covers the 1945–1949 period of the Chinese Civil War — the Third Revolutionary Civil War, from August 1945 to October 1949 — presented in five parts, documenting the confrontations between the Communist Party and the Kuomintang and the seizure of state power by the armed forces. Together the three halls form the narrative spine implied by the museum's name: the revolution of the Chinese people, told through the wars that made the PLA and the state it serves.

Ancient wars, modern wars and Korea

The Hall of Ancient Wars, on the third floor on the west side, presents internal and external wars during the 4,000 years before the Qing dynasty in some descriptions, and in others the splendid Chinese military culture of more than 5,000 years from the Qin Dynasty (221–206 BC) to the Qing Dynasty (1644–1911), with sculptures, waxworks and models recording the wars and inventions of Chinese history. The Hall of Modern Wars, on the fourth floor in the current arrangement, covers internal and external wars between 1840 and 1919 or 1949 — the century of the Opium Wars, the Taiping and other upheavals, and the fall of the Qing — with a hall for the First Revolutionary Civil War of 1924–1927 added among the sections set up after 1983.

The Hall of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea displays the history of the Chinese People's Volunteers fighting alongside the Korean army from October 1950 to July 1953, during the Korean War. The western wing's displays on the Protection of Socialist Revolution and Construction introduce how the PLA safeguarded national security, safeguarded and took part in socialist construction, and carried out its own development and modernisation after 1949 — the themes developed in the current Hall of National Defense and Army Building.

Defence building, gifts and art

The Hall of National Defense and Army Building, on the third floor on the east side in the current arrangement, presents modern military achievements and developments since 1949: the growth and record of national defence and army building in the People's Republic, up to the PLA's present equipment and organisation. The Hall of Presents — the Hall of Friendly Exchanges between China's PLA and Foreign Militaries, on the fourth floor with the theme Peace and Friendship — displays gifts to the Chinese military or state by foreign militaries and states, documenting the PLA's international exchanges.

Art has a formal place in the museum. The Hall of Cheng Yunxian's Sculptural Arts holds plaster reproductions of sculptures of world leaders, historical figures and scientists by Cheng Yunxian, and the Hall of Selected Military Artworks, in the central part of the second floor, presents famous military art. The museum's holdings of more than 4,500 artworks, and its exhibitions of fine art works of the whole army, make it a centre for military art as well as military history.

Exhibitions, publications and visiting

Beyond its permanent halls, the museum has launched exhibitions such as the Exhibition of Learning from Comrade Lei Feng, exhibitions of the contributions of Zhu De, Peng Dehuai, He Long, Chen Yi and Luo Ronghuan, the Exhibition of Armament Technological Renovation of the Whole Army and the Exhibition of Fine Arts Works of the Whole Army. Its publications include the Wall Maps of Chinese Revolutionary Army, Selected Maps of Chinese Revolutionary Wars, Artwork Florilegium of the Military Museum and War of Resistance Against Japan, and it has published the monthly journal Military History since 1985.

The museum stands at No. 9 Fuxing Road, Haidian District, Beijing, by the Military Museum station. It is open to free admission, with visitors required to show identification and consent to security bag checks; recorded opening hours are 8:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. in visitor information. Its official website is eng.jb.mil.cn. For readers of this directory, the Military Museum of the Chinese People's Revolution is recorded as the national military museum at Beijing, China — opened on 1 August 1960 in one of the capital's Ten Great Buildings, reconstructed and greatly expanded in 2012–2017, and holding over 180,000 relics of Chinese military history from the Spring and Autumn Period to the space age.